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The deconstruction of deviance 7
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When social science offered the metaphor of the construction of social reality (Berger and Luckman 18
1966) the deconstruction of that reality soon followed. Jacques Derrida introduced the term in Of 19
Grammatology (1967). While Derrida focused narrowly on literary text in his early work, the theory 20
and method of deconstruction became an integral part of the “new” social theories: poststruc- 21
turalism, postmodernism and various veins of critical theory (Agger 1991, Lyman 1997, 22
Leledakis 2000). 23
One can become dizzy considering the voluminous debate over what Derrida or his intellec- 24
tual predecessor Heidegger really meant with the concept of deconstruction. Moreover, its 25
meaning appears to have broadened as it was applied to the various perspectives of the different 26
social sciences and humanities. Perhaps the broadest view of deconstruction is the analytical 27
process that examines the assumptions and experiences that shape meaning. Rather than taking 28
these for granted, deconstruction identifies how assumptions and experiences result in shared 29
cultural meaning. 30
As inexorably related social phenomena pregnant with assumptions, experience and shared 31
cultural meaning, deviance and social control can be deconstructed. What then is meant by the 32
“deconstruction of deviance”? 33
One way to think about deconstruction is to contrast it with the concept of construction. 34
The social construction of deviance refers to the conditions, processes and effects of social 35
interaction and cultural meanings that together invent and reify the designation of a behavior 36
as deviance and the people we call deviants (see Chapter 2, this volume). Deviance is not a 37
“thing” that is objectively real and tangible; rather it is created and recreated through human 38
interaction. Deviants are not a “type” of person that can be diagnosed with a checklist of 39
symptoms but simply any person to whom the deviant label has successfully been applied 40
(Becker 1963). 41
In this sense the deconstruction of deviance calls attention to the conditions, processes and 42
effects that construct deviance. The deconstruction of deviance would note, for example, that 43
certain conditions like material deprivation more easily produce “moral panics,” extreme 44
reactions to a perceived threat when there is not an actual increase in the level of threat. Some 45
social processes, socialization for example, more readily transmit definitions of deviance than 46
the non-verbal impersonal processes that guide us through the subway. Some effects, child 47
abuse for example, are more likely to produce a deviant label for the perpetrator than a fistfight 48

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1 between two barflies. The deconstruction of deviance, in this sense, literally takes the building
2 materials of the social construction of deviance and examines each independently.
3 In the hands of critical theory deconstruction becomes a method for identifying where social
4 inequalities are manifest and a theory for explaining how elites manage to maintain the false
5 consciousness of the plebs. For the critical theorist deconstruction is not simply an analytical
6 tool but a weapon to fight oppression, a means to lift the blinders of false consciousness away
7 and demonstrate how specific ontological assumptions are used to justify status inequality while
8 people’s experiences in that status order reify the existing system. In this view the deconstruction
9 of deviance would not just examine the assumptions of femininity that produce the deviant “slut”
0 label for women with active sex lives, but also how this assumption benefits male interests and
11 can be applied to women for simply challenging the patriarchal hegemony. Many women, it
12 turns out, are actually “falsely accused,” guilty of nothing more than failing to live up to the
13 feminine ideal (Tanenbaum 2000). The horrible period of lynching in the United States
14 not only reveals how whites used terrorism to confine the black population to the bottom of
15 the status hierarchy, but also how white male identity was constructed through its practice
16 (Messerschmidt 1997)
17 All these variations on deconstructionism are true to Heidegger’s and Derrida’s argument
18 to focus inquiry on subjective reality as experienced by individuals rather than the positivists’
19 world of observation and objectivity. Reality is not something to be discovered by the careful
20 use of the scientific method but rather something that is experienced uniquely by individuals
21 living in particular settings, under particular assumptions and with particular experiences.
22 Examining how these constituent parts construct meaning is the goal of deconstruction.
23 This chapter describes the deconstruction of deviance over the history of sociology’s interest
24 in the topic. It begins with the preconstructionist Durkheim parsing the “normal” and the
25 “pathological,” and the functionalist counterintuitive notion that deviance is good for society.
26 Sociology then takes the allegorical critical turn where the method of deconstruction comes to
27 the fore as a means of identifying the power and status relations in deviance. Deconstruction
28 finally comes full circle as the study of deviance is declared dead, reports of which were greatly
29 exaggerated. Stepping away from deconstruction as a research methodology, the chapter
30 identifies the everyday use of deconstruction in social interaction.
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The preconstructionists
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34 Before there was a social construction of reality there were “social facts,” an intangible nature
35 to reality that exists outside the individual but is nevertheless as real as food and bullets. In The
36 Rules of the Sociological Method, Emile Durkheim (1938) laid out a methodology for identifying
37 aspects of society that are “real.” Determining the effects of a “thing” is one way of telling if it
38 is real or not. For example, he deconstructs “crime” into the “normal” and the “pathological,”
39 depending upon the effects it has on the society. Crime that delineates social boundaries,
40 improves social solidarity and produces social change is “normal” and in this sense the fact of
41 “normal crime” is real. Conversely, an amount of crime that produces disorder and disinte-
42 gration is pathological, bad for the society, and just as real as normal crime. Crime, universally
43 considered bad for a society, is deconstructed into crime that is good and crime that is bad.
44 Durkheim takes apart the taken-for-granted assumption that crime is bad and launches several
45 generations of sociologists in a search for other ways that crime can be deconstructed into the
46 good and the bad.
47 The prototype of this search is Kingsley Davis’ (1937) “The sociology of prostitution.”
48 Condemned in the Bible and outlawed in America, Davis insists that the persistence of

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prostitution must have some benefit to a society. The act of sex is considered quite normal and 1
encouraged in specific social relations. What separates the “crime” of prostitution from the 2
“normal” act of marital coitus is simply a transactional nature, the exchange of money for sex. 3
Davis also notes that society limits approved sex to marriage, but some men seek satisfaction 4
outside marriage. This is a problem for marriage and the important family unit it buttresses as 5
the man may form emotional attachments to other females. Prostitution, however, is simply a 6
monetary rather than an emotional transaction and is thus free from this kind of complication. 7
Prostitution provides access to sex without threatening a marriage, and is thus “good.” 8
To be sure, the preconstructionists were not the intellectual source of Derrida’s decon- 9
struction. Nonetheless the functionalists took something with taken-for-granted meaning, and 0
examined and challenged that meaning by identifying elements of the meaning in a way that 11
actually opposed the taken-for-granted assumption that deviance is “bad.” The precon- 12
structionists, however, did not consider the role of power and status in producing the meanings 13
they deconstructed; that turn was just down the road. 14
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The critical turn (around)
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The “critical turn” is a much used, abused, disabused, and misused phrase, often used to describe 18
the time in American sociology when the dominant functionalist paradigm was challenged 19
by a handful of scholars who insisted that not everyone shared the fruits of society’s functions. 20
The turn away from functionalist theory would eventually see functionalism relegated to 21
sociology textbooks. 22
The sociology of deviance was one of the subject areas to turn the fastest and this was due 23
in no small part to the use of deconstruction by sociologists studying deviance. The labeling 24
perspective started the turn. Perhaps not intentionally, but it offered the first challenge to the 25
notion that social control has only positive consequences. Later, social conflict theory and other 26
critical perspectives would implicate the elite’s control over the labeling process as a means to 27
maintain the status order. The full deconstruction of power and social control turns functionalism 28
back on itself and argues for the complete dismantling of existing power relations. 29
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Labeling perspective
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Someone steals a bicycle and is caught with the bike. The people in the community have a new 33
label for that person: thief. With that new label comes new meaning about the person. The new 34
meaning is not inert. It is not simply another label among labels. The “deviant” label imputes 35
a negative character to the individual and begins a ceremony segregating the individual from 36
the society in a “dramatization of evil” (Tannenbaum 1938). Lemert (1951) further deconstructs 37
the deviant label and demonstrates that the relevant feature is not the act itself, but rather the 38
response of the community. One can break rules many times without detection and escape the 39
effects of labeling (primary deviance), but the real effects begin when the person is caught and 40
labeled (secondary deviance). The negative reactions of others are part of the constructed 41
meaning. The “normal” is now the “deviant.” For even if one commits numerous foul and 42
heinous act, one is neither foul nor heinous until someone else detects and labels the act. 43
Managing these deviant labels is not easy. In Stigma, Erving Goffman (1963) describes the 44
various strategies people use to avoid or attenuate the “stigma” associated with the deviant label. 45
Again, the act itself may be irrelevant, as even the “falsely accused” must treat the label as real 46
in its consequences. Howard Becker (1963), in the seminal Outsiders, adds to this the observation 47
that the deviant label is more potent than all others as it becomes a “master status.” He too 48

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1 advances the proposition that the rule and the act are themselves irrelevant to the label; all that
2 matters are the responses of others. Goffman and Becker both deconstruct the deviant label to
3 find the source of its meaning and find that it is not the action and not the rule that make the
4 deviant label, it is the negative responses of others that create the consequences for the “person
5 so labeled.”
6 Deconstructing the labeling process soon revealed the role that power and status play in
7 applying deviant labels. William Chambliss’ “The Saints and the Roughnecks” (1973b) illustrates
8 how two groups of youth, one high status and one low status, both involved in criminal behavior,
9 could face entirely different labels and entirely different outcomes. The Saints committed
0 delinquent and frequently dangerous acts, yet, by virtue of their resources and high status,
11 faced few sanctions, were considered the “good kids,” and went on to successful, happy lives.
12 The Roughnecks committed criminal but rarely dangerous acts, yet, by virtue of their meager
13 resources and low status, were considered the “bad seeds,” were constantly punished and for
14 the most part lived miserable, short lives. Chambliss deconstructed the meaning of “deviant” in
15 the town of “Hannibal” and explained how economic and status relations affect the constructed
16 meaning of a youth as a Saint or a Roughneck.
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Critical theories
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20 Conflict criminology pushed the critical turn by identifying how the law and criminal justice
21 system are used to maintain the stratification system. Criminal laws harshly punish small-time
22 property criminals but slap white-collar criminals on the wrist. Justice can be purchased through
23 a good lawyer and the scales of justice tip heavily toward those with more status and resources.
24 Deviance scholars were already on this path of course, identifying the ways that norms and social
25 control maintained the status order to the benefit of the elite. Thus we begin to see Derrida’s
26 concept and view social constructions like deviance as the result of unequal power relations.
27 Dozens of studies over the years described this process, but the work of Chambliss particularly
28 stands out as deconstructing the law as a tool to serve elite interests (see, for example, Chambliss
29 1973a; Chambliss and Zatz 1993). Over two decades Chambliss deconstructed the legal process,
30 property crimes, corruption and even mundane laws like vagrancy, finding in each case how
31 the interests of the elite and their power to make law produced a “criminal” where before there
32 was none. Elites use this same process to shield themselves from those same laws, redefining
33 their own actions as part of a normally functioning society. Messerschmidt (1997) summed up
34 Chambliss’ and others’ observations with a general theory that deconstructed deviance in terms
35 of race, class and gender, demonstrating how the meanings and privileges associated with race,
36 class and gender “structured” what gets defined and reacted to as deviant and who becomes
37 deviant.
38 While the conflict theorists deconstructed deviance in terms of the economic status order,
39 feminist sociology gave the discipline a harder turn, insisting that gender deviance was nothing
40 more than a tool to maintain male power and status. Feminist criminologists pointed to the ways
41 in which the criminal justice system treated men and women differently, enforcing laws, like
42 prostitution, on women that were rarely enforced on men. In the field of deviance, feminist
43 scholars enumerate the methods used by a patriarchal society to maintain male status. Numerous
44 pejorative terms were applied to women who refused to act feminine, who wanted to rise in the
45 labor or political hierarchy, play sports or simply wanted an erotic sex life. Sexually active women
46 were not just devalued next to other women (the whore/Madonna dichotomy), but were
47 stigmatized for the exact same behavior for which males were praised! Women athletes face the
48 “lesbian stigma” and practice stigma avoidance (Blinde and Taub 2005). Feminist researchers

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deployed the method of deconstruction and laid bare the patriarchal underpinnings of a world 1
that most took for granted as grounded in biological necessity. 2
The critical turn in social science, and deviance studies particularly, benefited from 3
deconstructionism. It is not enough to say that deviance is socially constructed, unique to specific 4
times and places, without explaining how it is that those constructions happen. The method of 5
deconstruction exposed the role of power, interests, status and resources in both defining 6
deviance and determining who would be defined as a deviant. Deviance and deviants are not 7
natural a priori categories but arise out of human relations and more often than not out of 8
unequal relations (Konty 2007). 9
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Deconstruction of the deconstruction
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Every deconstruction can be deconstructed. 13
(Agger 1991: 115) 14
15
The alternative rock band REM released an album in 1985 titled Fables of the Reconstruction. On 16
the album cover the phrase “of the” is also written after the word “Reconstruction.” So the title 17
of the album actually reads: “Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction 18
of the Fables . . .,” and so on. The implication is that the process is neverending, much like the 19
process of deconstruction. Once elites have been exposed by the deconstruction of deviance, 20
what is left? Why, the deconstruction of the deconstruction of deviance, of course. 21
In an article that now finds its way into every deviance reader, Liazos (1972) critiques the 22
study of deviance itself and rather than deconstructing the interests of those involved in the social 23
control enterprise he deconstructs the interests of those studying deviance. “Nuts, sluts and 24
perverts,” it seems, are titillating. Students want to hear about it, faculty want to write about it, 25
and publishers know they can sell articles and books about it. But titillation and marketing are 26
fine and dandy until someone gets exploited, and Liazos argues that simply studying the deviant 27
is exploitative. Here the deconstruction leads to an entirely new conclusion, that by studying 28
and deconstructing deviance, the researcher reifies the very definitions of deviance they claim 29
to destroy! The researcher may wax poetically about “elite deviance” and “power relations” but 30
does nothing tangible to stop it. The researcher instead is aiding and abetting the further 31
exploitation of the powerless deviant. 32
Summers (1994) goes still farther and claims that the deconstruction of deviance has 33
“demolished the terrain,” there is nothing left to fight over but “empty trenches” and 34
“unexploded mines.” Deviance, it seems, has been deconstructed to death. Summers proposes 35
that sociologists should move on to the more promising area of the social movements that create 36
deviance and drive the resistance. Henderschott (2002) aims one parting blow at the dead 37
horse. In her deconstructive analysis the power relation is political, the liberals are trying 38
to silence the conservatives by deconstructing all the deviance conservatives hold dear 39
(homosexuality, drug use), while failing to deconstruct deviance as defined by liberals (political 40
correctness, sexual harassment). Deviance studies are a one-sided political struggle, defining 41
deviance up (Krauthammer 1993) or down (Moynihan 1993) according to leftist political goals. 42
Since leftist ideals reign supreme in the academy, the only deviance being deconstructed is 43
deviance with which liberals disagree. 44
Erich Goode (2002) takes up the defense of the “empty castle,” claiming that deviance is still 45
a viable field with many students, publications and research projects. Joel Best (2004) finds this 46
argument unconvincing, arguing, much as Liazos did, that just because scholars and students 47
are still titillated by deviance, that does not mean that deviance studies are a robust field. These 48

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1 two protagonists and several other writers take up the discussion in a special issue of Sociological
2 Spectrum (2006, vol. 26). The conclusion? According to Konty (2006), as long as there is a sub-
3 ject to be studied, a process to be explained, and perhaps most importantly a robust debate
4 about the subject, the subject’s death has been greatly exaggerated (see also Konty 2007). The
5 deconstruction of the deconstruction of the deconstruction continues.
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Deconstruction by the damned
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9 As scholars, we often have the conceit that only we can do what we do. Perhaps this conceit is
0 merited on occasion and on first blush it seems likely that most people could not care less about
11 the deconstruction of deviance, much less employ it as a methodology in their daily lives. Or
12 do they?
13 Scott and Lyman’s (1968) notion of “accounts” proposed that people offer verbal statements
14 to explain their “untoward behavior” to one another. Actors are not required to explain their
15 “routine, common sense behavior,” only that behavior which may cause problems for the
16 interaction or the relationship. In other words, people are motivated to explain their deviant
17 behavior in terms that their interaction partners or general audience will accept. The purpose
18 is to convince the other that the untoward, or deviant, behavior is actually acceptable, given the
19 circumstances described in the account.
20 Building on Sykes and Matza’s (1957) “techniques of neutralization,” Scott and Lyman
21 argued that people pursue one of two strategies. The first is an “excuse” where the deviant admits
22 the act was wrong but claims that uncontrollable circumstances are responsible. For example,
23 “I am late because of traffic” is an excuse that recognizes the violation of a punctuality norm
24 but claims the tardiness was unavoidable. The second type of account is a “justification,” where
25 the deviant admits culpability for the act, but “denies the pejorative” quality of the act. For
26 example, “I was late because I had to take my kid to the doctor” is a justification that admits
27 intention and accepts responsibility but claims that the punctuality norm is nullified by a more
28 important norm to care for one’s children. Like Sykes and Matza, Soctt and Lyman offer several
29 subtypes of excuses and justifications, thus revealing a breadth and depth to people’s explanations
30 for their deviance.
31 Unlike Sykes and Matza, who claimed their techniques of neutralization preceded the deviant
32 act and had a causal effect by reducing informal control mechanisms, Scott and Lyman make
33 no such causal claim. In fact, the actual cause of the act is irrelevant as the important element
34 is the way in which the deviant act is explained to one’s interaction partners. In essence, Scott
35 and Lyman make the claim that people are lay deconstructionists, deconstructing their own
36 deviance via language into two elements: the responsibility for the act and the wrongness of the
37 act. In so doing they change the meaning of the act from an act of wrongdoing to one that is
38 excused or justified. The need to deconstruct one’s deviance even surfaces when attempting to
39 explain a heinous event like rape, with almost no hope of winning approval by the other (Scully
40 and Marolla 1984).
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Coda
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44 The deconstruction of deviance is as old as the subject of deviance. While some took up Derrida’s
45 challenge to use deconstruction as a tool to uncover power relations, functionalists and the early
46 proponents of labeling theory had already discerned the utility of deconstructing deviance into
47 constituent elements and thereby uncover features of deviance not readily seen. In everyday
48 interaction, people generally intuit the utility of deconstructing deviance as they deconstruct

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their own deviance as a means of restoring social relationships. The metaphor of deconstruction 1
at last measure invites a recursive process where the language of deconstruction is itself 2
deconstructed and criticized. Still, there is no arguing with the utility of the concept. While 3
Derrida’s vision and purpose may have been limited to literary texts, his ideas proved to be a 4
powerful methodology for the sociology of deviance. 5
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References
8
Agger, B. (1991) “Critical theory, poststructuralism, and postmodernism: their sociological relevance,” 9
Annual Review of Sociology, 17: 105–31. 0
Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press.
Berger, P. L. and T. Luckman (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. 11
Best, J. (2004) Deviance: Career of a Concept, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 12
Blinde, E. M. and D. E. Taub (2005) “Women athletes as falsely accused deviants: managing the lesbian 13
stigma,” Sociological Quarterly, 33: 521–33. 14
Chambliss, W. (1973a) “Elites and the creation of criminal law,” in W. Chambliss (Ed.) Sociological Readings 15
in the Conflict Perspective (pp. 430–44). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
—— (1973b) “The saints and the roughnecks,” Society, 11: 24–31. 16
Chambliss, W. and M. Zatz (1993) Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions, Bloomington: 17
Indiana University Press. 18
Davis, K. (1937) “The sociology of prostitution,” American Sociological Review, 5: 744–55. 19
Derrida, J. (1967) De La Grammatologie. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. 20
Durkheim, E. (1938) The Rules of the Sociological Method. New York: Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 21
Goode, E. (2002) “Does the death of the sociology of deviance make sense?,” The American Sociologist, 22
33: 107–18. 23
Henderschott, A. (2002) The Politics of Deviance. San Francisco: Encounter Books. 24
Konty, M. (2006) “Of deviance and deviants,” Sociological Spectrum, 26: 621–31. 25
—— (2007) “When in doubt, tell the truth: pragmatism and the sociology of deviance,” Deviant Behavior,
28: 153–70. 26
Krauthammer, C. (1993) “Defining deviancy up: the new assault on bourgeois life,” The New Republic, 27
21: 20–25. 28
Leledakis, K. (2000) “Derrida, deconstruction and social theory,” European Journal of Social Theory, 3: 175–93. 29
Lemert, E. (1951) Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill. 30
Liazos, A. (1972) “The poverty of the sociology of deviance: nuts, sluts, and perverts,” Social Problems,
20: 103–20. 31
Lyman, S. (1997) Postmodernism and a Sociology of the Absurd and Other Essays on the “Nouvelle Vague” in American 32
Social Science. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. 33
Messerschmidt, J. W. (1997) Crime as Structured Action: Gender, Race, Class and Crime in the Making. Thousand 34
Oaks, CA: Sage. 35
Moynihan, P. (1993) “Defining deviancy down,” American Scholar, 62: 17–31.
Scott, M. B. and S. Lyman (1968) “Accounts,” American Sociological Review, 33: 46–62. 36
Scully, D. and J. Marolla (1984) “Convicted rapists’ vocabulary of motive: excuses and justifications,” Social 37
Problems, 31: 530–44. 38
Summers, C. (1994) The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary. Buckingham: Open University Press. 39
Sykes, G. M. and D. Matz (1957) “Techniques of neutralization: a theory of delinquency,” American 40
Sociological Review, 22: 664–70.
Tannenbaum, F. (1938) Crime and Community. Boston, MA: Ginn. 41
Tanenbaum, L. (2000) Slut! Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation. New York: HarperCollins. 42
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